Editorial 62.2: Envisioning the architectural science research agenda

Welcome to the second Edition of Architectural Science Review for 2019. The first three papers are part the Special Edition on heat island mitigation (Jusuf et al. 2019).

These papers were selected as part of the Edition and we have included them in this edition as an extension of the Special Edition. The contributions of these papers add to the general findings.

The first paper called ‘Effects of street design on pedestrian thermal comfort’, by Elmira Jamei and Priyadarsini Rajagopalan address the issue of external thermal comfort in cities.

The research provides an evidence-based study of the application of cooling strategies on overheating in cities. Using Melbourne Australia as a case study they take a specific study area which will see an increase in development and examines microclimate improvements that can be achieved through the implementation of climate responsive urban design strategies. Using a simulation study demonstrates the benefits of these strategies. The study is important as it supports planning policy for the area. Further importance is that Melbourne’s climate is temperate and highly variable with rapid changes in daily weather patterns and periods of heat wave conditions. Hence the strategies for heat island mitigation, which aim to reduce average temperature conditions, can also create microclimate conditions, which reduce the variations in peak temperature. Hence they can increase the possibility of better conditions for thermal comfort in urban spaces.

The second paper related to the Special Edition is another case study. Called ‘Macro and micro level studies using Urban Heat Islands to simulate effects of greening, building materials and other mitigating factors in Mumbai city’. The author Aparna Dwivedi provides an important perspective from the Indian subcontinent using Mumbai as a case study on the effects of urban heat island. This study is important as it examines conditions in tropical climates. The author emphases that the mitigation process needs a further study at the macro and micro climatic level using a simulation study with fieldwork measures. The author argues that the increasing size and intensity of the heat island overheating is caused by the changes in land use and the materials used in the construction process. One important issue in the climate change debate is the displacement in tropical climates of rainforest building development. We realize that rainforest is one of the ways bioregions in control heating and CO₂ sequestration. The latent heat of transpiration forms an important heat mitigation process. The clearing of forest areas to make way for urban densification and other land uses contributes to increasing heat temperature rises. The clearing process creates ‘hot spots’ as compared to the surrounding areas. These are studied in detail to examine the effects of building materials on temperature increases. In a world that is now looking at solutions to ‘climate change’, roadmaps for mitigation are now being built about how to further utilize the cooling and sequestration potential in tropical rain forest.

Research at the University of Technology Sydney reports that one of the most important sequestration measures could be large-scale reforestation, particularly in the subtropics and tropics (Institute of Sustainable Futures 2018).

The third paper by Shinzato et al. is called, ‘Calibration process and parametrization of tropical plants using ENVI-met V4 – Sao Paulo case study’. At first sight, this paper appears to be about the calibration of the simulation modeller topical conditions, in particular, the effectiveness of modelling vegetation. Vegetation is a significant strategy for mitigating Heat Island issues due to the latent heat effects of evaporation from the plants. Hence the paper makes an important contribution to the methodology and rigour of future modelling. However, the case study make interesting reading from the morphological perspective and reports on how Sao Paulo is changing with increasing anthropogenic heat sources from traffic and stationary heat loads from buildings through the rising use of air conditioning.

Hence, Steve Kardinal Jusuf, Marcel Ignatius, Wong Nyuk Hien & Hasheem Akbari in the Editorial for the Special Edition on Urban Heat Island point out

Parameters such as urban plan area density, geometry of the buildings and topographical features influence airflows in and around buildings and energy consumption on a regional scale. While the role of planners, architects, and policy makers have become more important, the UHI mitigation strategies will be especially imperative in the future scenario of climate change and adaptation. (Jusuf et al. 2019)

With the development of more specific mitigation and adaption models at the macro level, we need to consider the application of these findings at the local level. This reminds me that we need to attack the environmental problems at the source, hence mitigation of CO₂ sources and adaption process should include such things as reforestation in urban areas. This will include micro economic reform of the process by which cities develop (Hyde et al. 2007).

The consequence of this line of thinking is seen in the next paper. Called ‘Energy and the form of cities: the counterintuitive impact of disruptive technologies’ the authors Ehsan Ahmadian, Hugh Byrd, Behzad Sodagar, Steve Matthewman, Christine Kenney and Glen Mills examine the impact on new technologies and their business activities on planning policy of cities.

It could be argued that this provocative paper starts to refocus the architectural science agenda in the wake of the new emerging technologies and the changing challenge of climate and its impact on cities. The paper is a discursive review of the impact of disruptive technologies.

If we look more closely at the word ‘Disruptive’, we see it is ‘causing or tending to cause disruption’. The meaning comers form the nouns ‘disrupt’ to separate, split, break and ‘turmoil’ leading to interruption, confusion, agitation and disturbance. The research interest in disruptive technologies is gaining ground in the economic arena and with reference to new technologies such as renewable energy (Prevett 2018).

The word is gaining popularity with respect to current climate conditions. There are calls to describe ‘global warming’ and ‘climate change’ as the ‘global climate disruption’ since the former implies a gradual change in the environment rather than the swift and precipitous conditions the world is confronted with at the present. Whilst many are slow to understand and recognize this reality hence we need a vocabulary, which is near to the reality (Malakoff 2019).

The economic theoreticians have been quick to see both the opportunities and the limitations of this new thinking. An initiative called the third industrial revolution is such an analysis. Advanced by Jeremy Rifkin in his book ‘The Third Industrial Revolution; How Lateral Power is Transforming Energy, the Economy, and the World’ he sets the context for Ahmadian et al.’s paper. The paper adds to the provocative ideas about the influence of disruptive technologies on the form of the cities. Rifkin’s work observes that the third revolution comprises the convergence of new technologies and their economic advantages. He argues three technologies that of renewable energy, the Internet revolution and the sharing economy can be harnessed to address current climate disruption (Rifkin 2011).

Third Industrial Revolution is based on five pillars … 

(1) shifting to renewable energy; (2) transforming the building stock of every continent into micro-power plants to collect renewable energies on site; (3) deploying hydrogen and other storage technologies in every building and throughout the infrastructure to store intermittent energies; (4) using Internet technology to transform the power grid of every continent into an energy-sharing intergrid that acts just like the Internet (when millions of buildings are generating a small amount of energy locally, on site, they can sell surplus back to the grid and share electricity with their continental neighbours): and (5) transitioning the transport fleet to electric plug-in and fuel cell vehicles that can buy and sell electricity on a smart, continental, interactive power grid. (Financial Post 2017)

At the macro level policy recommendations for compact cities intuitively look attractive particularly in Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD). Compact Cities according to OECD policy have dense and proximate development patterns, are linked by public transport systems, and maintain accessibility to local services, jobs and social networks; lessen the impact on the environment, with shorter travel distances and reducing automobile dependency, increasing the efficiency of infrastructure investment (OECD 2012). Hence if the factors discussed in the previous papers on UHI make a case for rethinking the compact city in terms of emerging climate, disruption is necessary in order to accommodate climate disruption.

The next paper in this edition has a theoretical direction and is also relevant to technologies for improving thermal comfort in the external environment. Called ‘Revisiting radiant cooling: condensation-free heat rejection using infrared-transparent enclosures of chilled panels’ it is the outcome of a team of researchers namely Teitelbaum et al. (2018). The paper examines new technologies to provide radiant cooling for external thermal comfort in external environments. The work builds on previous research dating back to 1963 carried out by Morse. The new work by Teitelbaum et al involves an innovative approach to potentially avoid some of the limitations of radiant cooling in external environments.

The next three papers explore issues of architectural design. Zargar and Alaghmandan (2018) provide a Technical Note for assisting with the parametric design of stadia. Called ‘CORAL: introducing a fully computational plug-in for stadium design and optimization; a case study of finding optimal spectators’ viewing angle’, it provides a useful to advance the computer-aided architectural design.

The paper by Nicole Ruta, Stefano Mastandrea, Olivier Penacchio, Stefania Lamaddalena and Giuseppe Bove explore user preferences for curvature and sharpness in architectural façades. The research asks the question: Can curvature drive preference, perceived familiarity, complexity, stability and approachability for architectural façades? The study brings together a multidisciplinary approach from art, architecture, psychology and neuroscience to address this question. The implications of the research add to the understanding of human preferences and their relationship to the building context.

The final paper is by Philippe Charest, André Potvin and Claude M. H. Demers. Called ‘Aquilomorphism: materializing wind in architecture through ice weathering simulations’, the paper has an innovative approach to generating architectural forms with organic geometries. Using analogous simulations the authors have evolved a method, which has unique applications in architectural and urban design situations.

In summary, there is evidence that the discussion on UHI there is a need for more detailed microclimate studies of urban areas used by pedestrians to improve comfort (Jamei and Rajagopalan 2018). The city scale case studies of the UHI phenomena are particularly useful in understanding the morphology of cities in charting the impact of mitigation and adaption strategies. The Sao Paulo and Mumbai study reminds us we need macro and micro studies to achieve this goal (Shinzato et al. 2019) and that these studies should include the heat and CO₂ producing technologies which are currently disrupting the macro and urban climate (Ahmadian et al. 2018). Furthermore theoretical study such as that by Teitelbaum et al. provide evidence of how we might develop new systems of radiant cooling of outdoor thermal comfort. The remaining papers advance thinking in architectural design though study of advancing computer-aided design and by exploring architectural interest in the relationship between environmental conditions and architectural science (Charest, Potvin, and Demers 2018; Ruta et al. 2018).